Australian potential is ready to be realised

February 18, 2014

Ahead of my visit to Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane in 3 weeks I thought I’d give some perspective around why Navigate are exploring the potential of expansion – not within London, but Brisbane – a city of just over 2m people, 10,000 miles away.

As a smaller, independent agency we are always looking at potential or “the next big thing” – be that in technology, our clients or our employees. Recognising and nurturing ‘potential’ is a skill that I believe has been a massive part of our success as an agency to date and having kept a watching eye on the Australian market for around 3 years, we feel the confident that now is the time to test the potential of what appears to be a buoyant market.

Whilst the growth of the digital market in Australia isn’t ‘breaking news’, Digital Marketing did continue to show its potential and go about its business in Australia in 2013. IAB Australia’s Online Advertising Expenditure Report (OAER) recently revealed that spend on digital channels exceeded $1bn (£550m) in the September 2013 quarter (July-September 2013) for the first time – recording a 25% growth year on year and 4.6% on the prior quarter.

Highlights from the report included:-

Display advertising was the biggest growth area (recording 41%) to reach $295.6m

Video advertising expenditure doubled year on year, recording $43.1m for the quarter (representing 15% of the total display advertising market)

Within the mobile advertising expenditure of $110.7m, 58.4% was search and 41.6% was general display.

Search and directories accounted for $527m – over half of the spend for the quarter

One channel that appeared to be absent from the report was performance (affiliate) marketing – an area that we have a particular interest in. This is probably down to the fact the Australian affiliate market has (according to The 2013 Australian Affiliate Marketing Benchmarking Survey) only recently shown signs of growth – demonstrated with the likes of OMG and Rakuten Linkshare recently opening offices out there. Whilst not a new channel in Australia, the report states that two thirds of respondents to the survey had only been using affiliate marketing for 3 years or less, which indicates that what is now a main stream channel over here, remains a relatively untapped channel in Australia.